Synthetic speech
AMOS Professional programmers are not restricted to printing words on screen. You can
corn ma nd your Amiga to say them! This can be invaluable for people whose eyesight is
impaired, for the creation of teaching programs for younger users, as well as for adding
atmosphere to computer games and sheer fun. Before uttering its first words of the day, a
Narrator device is loaded off disc automatically, and this takes a few seconds. After that, speech
is almost instant. Obviously, hard disc users must remember to install the Narrator on hard disc
before the Amiga will speak.
SAY
instruction: speak a phrase
Say text$
Say text$,mode
This is one of the simplest of all AMOS Professional commands to use, and it has one of the most satisfying results. Use the SAY instruction with a string of text, containing all the words and punctuation you want AMOS Professional to speak, like this:
E> Say "Welcome, everybody!"
Normally, all other instructions, music or sound effects will wait until AMOS Professional has finished speaking before they are executed. This default speech mode has a value of zero. By adding an optional mode value of 1, synthetic speech can be delivered while the rest of the program is being executed. This will necessarily slow down the relevant routines. To return to the default mode, use a line like this:
E> Say "Default mode.",0
Now get AMOS Professional to say anything you like, using the next simple routine, but please mind your language! Try experimenting with numbers and symbol characters too.
E> Do
Input "Please tell me what to say:";S$
S$=S$+"."
Say S$
Loop
If the Narrator system appears to fumble over a particular phrase, you are free to clarify things by adding spaces at the end of a sentence, or using phonetic spellings. As always, you cannot do any harm by experimenting.
SET TALK
instruction: set style of speech
Set Talk sex,mode,pitch,rate
The easiest way to test this command is to play with its parameters. These are given in the form of four values, and any of them can be omitted, providing the relevant commas are in position.